Clarence Birdseye Quotes

[On the foundation that lead to the forming of the frozen foods company Birds Eye in 1923 and then selling it for $22 million in 1929] Quick freezing was conceived, born, and nourished on a strange combination of ingenuity, stick-to-itiveness, sweat, and good luck.
Clarence Birdseye

Inventing is only one of my lines. I am also a bank director, a president of companies, a fisherman, an author, an engineer, a cook, a naturalist, a stockholder, a consultant, and a dock-walloper. Whenever anyone asks me what I am, I become rather confused, because I don’t know which one of these occupations to give. ‘To be perfectly honest,’ I told a young friend, ‘I am best described as just a guy with a very large bump of curiosity and a gambling instinct.’
Clarence Birdseye

I am just as much interested in the manufacture of chewing gum as of steel.
Clarence Birdseye

[On regularly suffering from frostbite] After a while you get used to it just like mosquito bites.
Clarence Birdseye

[Rich and in his mid forties] Following one’s curiosity is much more fun than taking things easy.
Clarence Birdseye

Develop a questioning mind and don’t be afraid to take a chance!
Develop a questioning mind – don’t be afraid to take a chance.
Clarence Birdseye

[To a young friend] If I were your age I would do the same kind of thing I have been doing all my life. I would go around asking a lot of damn-fool questions and taking chances.
Clarence Birdseye

There are some people… who say opportunity went out with the horse and buggy. That is rubbish.
Clarence Birdseye

Life has been an exciting adventure since my earliest remembrance, and today at 64, I am having just as much fun as I ever did.
Clarence Birdseye

[At age 64] I am never bored, because I am always prying into something or other which fascinates me.
Clarence Birdseye

[On seeing a plant where lard is rendered and coming up with a new way of ‘digesting’ wood chips in pulp mills] I gambled some time and money on research, and today, in collaboration with a group of other interested persons, am perfecting a process which I believe will simplify and speed up the manufacture of paper.
Clarence Birdseye

They hauled the fish in hand over hand - mighty slow, hard work. ‘Isn’t there an easier way of doing that?’ we asked. The fisherman shook their heads. That was the way the snappers had always been caught in the Gulf by them and their fathers and grandfathers. Consequently, they figured that was the only way to catch them. We didn’t agree… We developed an automatic electric real for catching fish… The reel which we have developed is not yet perfected, but it looks very promising.
Clarence Birdseye

The idea was not brand-new – few ideas are – but no one had every worked it out on what we considered a practical basis.
Clarence Birdseye

[In 1951] Today anything which is 20 years old is, or should be, apt to be obsolete.
Clarence Birdseye

To discover better ways of doing things one must question existent methods and practices and be courageous enough to gamble on something new or something different.
Clarence Birdseye

Some pious people say gambling is sinful, but actually it has always been and still is responsible for all progress, both spiritual and material.
Clarence Birdseye

The Twelve Apostles would never have spread the Christian faith if they had not taken fearful risks.
Clarence Birdseye

Galileo and Pasteur, Edison and Ford could not have made their great contributions to society if, as young men, they had gone in for the concept of economic security.
Clarence Birdseye

Few of us can hope to achieve as much as these great men of the past but, no matter how ordinary our endowments, we can at least emulate them by being daring.
Clarence Birdseye

Any youth who makes security his main goal shackles himself at the very start of life’s race. He will go much father, in all probability, if he steps out for himself, asks questions, and takes chances.
Clarence Birdseye

My own question-taking and chance taking propensities manifested themselves at an early age. Born in Brooklyn, one of 8 children, I never cared a great deal for formal games and sports, but I was very fond of the outdoors.
Clarence Birdseye

[On noticing a lot of muskrats near a farm where he holidayed on at Long Island] When I was about 10 years old, I was casting around for ways to raise money to buy a shotgun, and I thought of the muskrats. So I wrote a letter to Dr. William T. Hornaday, and asked him if the zoo was in the market for live muskrats. Dr. Hornaday replied that the zoo didn’t need any muskrats, but he gave me the name of an English lord who would pay $1 apiece for 12 live ‘rats’ with which to stock estate. That was a real opportunity.
Clarence Birdseye

I trapped 12 fine specimens and shipped them to his lordship. Three of the rats died en route but the others survived and I collected $9 with which I bought a fine single-barreled shotgun. My curiosity about muskrats paid off. I was embarked on the path of free enterprise.
Clarence Birdseye

By the time I reached college age our family fortunes had declined to such an extent that it was obvious I would have to work for any higher education I might receive…
Clarence Birdseye

I decided to go into business for myself instead of tending furnaces, washing dishes, or waiting on tables.
Clarence Birdseye

[On selling frogs he had noticed that had sprung up by the thousands to the Bronx Zoo for their resident snake] I collected the frogs, shipped them in wet burlap bags, and netted $115 – more money than I could have earned washing dishes for months.
Clarence Birdseye

I kept very quiet, thought, about my enterprises as a frog entrepreneur and rat merchant, for I was afraid of being kidded by my fellow students.
Clarence Birdseye

I have discovered… that anyone who attempts anything original in this world must expect a bit of ridicule. I have long since learned to take it in my stride.
Clarence Birdseye

[I] traveled to collect what promised to be a fortune in live foxes. But my little business was knocked into a cocked hat when, in 1914, the Newfoundland government, which owned Labrador, passed a law prohibiting the export of live foxes; and I was broke, after two years and some 5,000 miles of dog-team travel.
Clarence Birdseye

Prior to 1914, few American women wore fine furs and the greatest fur markets of the world were London and Leipsic. When the war closed these markets, fur prices crashed and it looked as though all fur traders in the North would be ruined. I had a strong conviction, however, that with the new prosperity which the war was bringing to the United States it wouldn’t be long before American women started buying furs in large quantities…
Clarence Birdseye